Abstract

VISACOVSKY, Sergio. Estudios sobre "clase media" en la antropología social: una agenda para la Argentina. Avá [online]. 2008, n.13, pp.1-1. ISSN 1851-1694.

The goal of this article is to present an outlook of the anthropological researches about middle class. First, I answer why social anthropology was not interested in studying people defined as "middle class" during the most part of its history. Second, I analyze how sociology in Argentina turned middle class into one of their main research objects in the 1950s (in connection with development and modernization topics), and since the 1990s (relating to impoverishment of Argentine society). Third, I present some pioneering ethnographic works of the 1960s and 1970s on Argentine people defined as "middle class", carried out by native and foreign researchers. Four, I examine the dilemmas of the traditional studies on middle class. And fifth, and I present a constructivist analytical model on middle class, for which are important anthropological studies about classification systems and the construction of social boundaries.

Keywords : Middle class; Classification; Constructivism; Social boundaries.